A 30-minute treadmill workout can remodel your heart tissues

Hitting treadmill for 30 minutes can remodel your heart tissues as expression of genes used to repair damaged DNA increased in response to endurance exercise, after a single session.

The study appeared in the journal of Experimental Physiology.

Researchers from the University of Maryland, the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, East Carolina University, the Catholic University of Brasilia and Southern Methodist University showed that physiological stressors like exercise can remodel heart tissue.

These findings are important for understanding how exercise provides a protective effect on the heart.

"The genes that are important for genome stability are upregulated in the heart tissue after a single bout of endurance exercise. This may contribute to the protective effects of exercise on cardiovascular health," said researcher Stephen Roth from the University of Maryland in the U.S.

The researchers studied the hearts of mice after 30 minutes of running on a treadmill.

They looked at how genes were being expressed compared to those in hearts of mice that had not been exercised.

The group results are applicable to humans because these genes are regulated in a similar way to those in humans.

They hope that by understanding this process and basic heart biology, future research may lead to increased life expectancy and drug-free cures for chronic heart problems, including high blood pressure.